


The Essential (Is Invisible to the Eyes)

by fiorediloto



Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: Established Relationship, Improper references to Madonna songs, M/M, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-28 14:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21137858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiorediloto/pseuds/fiorediloto
Summary: Among the many things nobody told him when he started this thing with Dick in ’42, is that one day he would stop and gape and feel fuzzy all over at the sight of his best friend in lavender pajamas.





	The Essential (Is Invisible to the Eyes)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains fictional characters inspired by real people, facts that probably didn't happen to them, and references to words found in books. None of it is accurate, none of it is true.
> 
> Written for the LLSS prompt _'Dick and Lew have been a couple since the end of the war, pretty much married but keeping it quiet. When Ambrose interviews them in the '90s, he 100% fails to notice.'_
> 
> Dear prompter, I've stretched your prompt so thin that the fic barely covers it. In fact, the fic is about something else entirely. I hope you don't mind too much :)
> 
> Thanks to [ThrillingDetectiveTales](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThrillingDetectiveTales/pseuds/ThrillingDetectiveTales) for beta-reading, patting my head upon request, and being amazing.

_1988_

  
  
  


Lew wakes up to an empty bed.

The sun hasn’t quite finished rising, but already a sea of light is filtering in through the half-open blinds. A ray of sunshine falls straight onto the pillow next to his, which lies parallel to the headboard, fluffed up and ready for another night. If Lew checks under it, he knows he’ll find a folded pair of heliotrope pajamas. Dick secretly hates them, but he’s too economical not to use them—not to mention they were a gift. The thought makes Lew smile.

He gets up slowly. There’s a lazy, Sunday-like quality to the day, though the weekend is still far to come. When he was young Lew figured that retirement would feel like an endless Sunday, but it doesn’t. Each day retains its intrinsic quality, Fridays hopeful, Saturdays bright, Mondays despondent yet full of nervous energy. This Wednesday, though, feels like a Sunday.

He considers the feeling as he walks into the kitchen, pajama pants hugging his flanks loosely, ankle cuffs tucked between his heels and the slippers. It’s an old pair and the rubber band is giving, but then again, most trousers look baggy on him these days.

He loads the coffee machine and opens the fridge, grabbing ham and cheese and tomatoes and a leftover heart of salad. He puts two bread slices in the toaster and starts chopping while the machine hums awake.

The kitchen counter faces the window, and Lew normally takes a moment to watch over the lawn and inspect the state of the grass, assessing at a glance the damage caused by heat waves or by hale and snow, depending on the season. The lawn is his domain, as is breakfast, and Lew takes pride in both. 

Today, however, the ladder blocks his view. Lew sighs softly and keeps at his task.

The gurgling of the machine grows more and more restless until it subsides completely, leaving the glass pot half-full and the kitchen flooded with coffee smell. Lew waits for the release of the toaster before switching the slices with two fresh ones, and when all the bread is ready he assembles the sandwiches, pours the coffee—black for himself, milk and sugar for Dick—and walks out onto the porch holding two mugs in one hand and balancing the plates on the other wrist.

He puts everything down on the ironwork table, making some noise to clearly announce his presence, and sits on a chair, folding the flaps of his dressing gown over his lap. He looks up to the roof, shielding his eyes.

They could have called the repairman. It’s not the first time that the TV antenna has acted up; they had a guy come over and fix it a few times, most recently less than a month ago. Better still, they should toss the whole thing and get a new one. It’s not like Lew hasn’t ventured the idea already, but Dick will have none of it. _I saw how he fixed it last time_, he said last night, before turning off his bedside lamp. _I’ll check it tomorrow_.

From where he’s sitting, Lew can see Dick’s shoulders and the shiny back of his head, glistening a fiery white like a light bulb. Age has taken its toll on his hairline, but the top of his head is still full of hair, which he keeps trimmed to perfection like he did in his Army days. 

“Coffee’s getting cold,” Lew announces, and Dick turns his head and looks down, a thin smile on his lips.

“Coming.”

In his seventies Dick still cuts an impressive figure, with straight shoulders and a waistline that has survived many years of Lew’s cooking. Until a few months ago, this early in the morning, he would have been running his daily six miles. Climbing up and down a ladder is no biggie, but one has to wonder if finding him on the roof twice in a month isn’t a sign of something.

Dick gets off the ladder and takes a seat next to Lew with a small, contented sigh. “Did I wake you up?”

“No, the alarm did.”

Dick nods like he’s considering the thought, as if Lew’s alarm didn’t always ring at the same time, then brings the mug up to his lips.

“Thank you for making breakfast,” he says, same as everyday since Lew took over the task in ’51. It made more sense in the old days, when Lew would make pancakes and crepes and bake pies that wouldn’t last a day under the assault of Lew’s furious appetite, but never in his life has Dick been stingy with words of thanks.

“So, what’s the diagnosis?” Lew asks before biting into his sandwich. It’s good, it’s healthy, the tomatoes are ripe and sweet and the bread toasted just right, but it isn’t a pancake.

“Mmm,” Dick hums around his mouthful. “Work in progress.”

“You going up again?”

“Yeah. I think I know what’s wrong.”

Lew leans with his elbow on the table. He’s not in for a replay of yesterday’s argument, not when he knows full well that arguing is a lost cause. He tries another angle. “Dan’s coming over later.”

“Is he?” Dick’s eyebrows do a little number, twisting and relaxing in an aborted frown.

“Uh-uh. He called yesterday. He’s in Philly on business, said he’d come by for dinner.”

At the mention of business Dick seems to relax. Lew knows the question that was briefly on the tip of Dick’s tongue _(Is he coming alone?_), but men don’t bring their wives along on business trips.

“I’ll clear out his room,” Dick says.

“I don’t think he’s staying.”

“Just in case.”

Lew can already tell that Dick will try to coax Daniel into staying the night, and he’s fine with letting him do all the hard work in that department. Not that Lew wouldn’t be happy to have Dan around for a while longer, but he always finds it hard to ask.

“They’ve been doing some renovations,” Lew continues after a bitter sip of coffee. “They got a bigger pool, and they’re turning Katie’s room into a home office.”

“What was wrong with the old pool?”

“Too small? I don’t know.”

Dick purses his lips in that perplexed, mildly disapproving look he’s mastered in his old age, which Lew finds particularly endearing. Lew reaches out to stroke Dick’s knuckles on the table, tracing the pattern of dark blue veins under the paper-thin, freckled skin of Dick’s hand.

“He might help out with the antenna,” Lew says easily, and then adds, “If you haven’t figured it out by then.”

“We’ll see,” Dick stalls, piqued, but it’s just a moment before he erases the frown from his brow and turns his hand under Lew’s to brush the other’s palm. Neither is in for a fight this morning.

They remain in that position for a while, utterly at peace, holding a mug in their free hands and sipping slowly at their coffee. Lew watches over the lawn and reminds himself that it’s watering day. They have a sprinkler, one of the new ones with a timer and all the frills which Dan got installed a few years back, but it broke at some point and Lew never bothered getting it fixed. He likes watering duty.

They finish their coffee and bring the used plates and mugs back inside.

“The fridge’s empty,” Lew announces, taking the stuff from Dick’s hands and bending to put them into the dishwasher. “I’ll go grab a shower and then I’m off to the store.”

“All right,” Dick says, putting his palms on his hips and throwing a glance outside, at the ladder still obscuring the view. Lew leaves him to consider his options and retires upstairs, to the private part of the house, all the way to the cramped, in-room bathroom which they prefer over the spacious ‘good’ one with the pretty tiles and the pristine faucets.

Lew disrobes quickly but takes a few minutes to enjoy the warm shower. He idly studies his body in the dim light of the cubicle, taking stock of his diminished midsection and newly flat chest. He’s been a large man for so long that he doesn’t know exactly what to do with this changed body; he still moves, walks, has the appetite of a much larger man. The driver’s seat of his car is still pushed all the way back and reclined to accommodate a belly that’s not there, and when he sits on a plane, the first thing he does is still lifting the armrests out of the way. 

He likes it, though. He knows that his body shows all the telltale signs of its repentine transformation, that the skin is not as taut around his cheeks as it used to be and his arms and thighs are full of ugly marks he’s going to take to his grave. But he loves the endless reserve of breath he seems to possess now, the newfound spring in his joints, the way his stomach dutifully keeps all in instead of releasing acid gushes up his throat whenever he lies down. He likes the increased flexibility and how his body fits curled around Dick’s when they lie in bed.

Two months ago, they had a shower together for the first time in thirty years—Lew wary at first, Dick taken by one of those rare, giddy moods that possess him once in a decade. It was an exhilarating experience to find that not only did they fit together in the tiny cubicle, but they did so easily. They kissed for a long time under the water, and then they took care of each other with loving, steadfast strokes that brought them off in seemingly no time. By the end Lew was panting hard, but the dizziness he’d expected hadn’t come and his heart beat strong and sure, as if it too had shed some dead weight.

Lew towels off and selects one of his newer shirts and trousers. He’s given most of his old stuff away to charity, keeping only a few gifts and some comfy home clothes that never really fit him anyway.

He’s relieved to find Dick on the sofa with the daily newspaper rather than perched on the roof, one false step away from breaking his neck. Dick has already browsed all the way to the crossword page, which makes Lew realize that he’s spent way longer in the shower than is his wont.

When he enters the living room, Dick doesn’t look up but something changes subtly in his posture, making it less stiff, and Lew feels guilty for forgetting what happened the last time he spent too long in the shower. 

“Help me out,” Dick calls. “California’s state tree, seven letters.”

“Redwood,” Lew answers automatically.

“No,” Dick replies. “Fourth letter is U.”

“Mm. What else you got?”

“Seven letters. She’s not a virgin, but she feels like one,” Dick reads out. “What does that even—”

“Madonna.”

“What?”

“Madonna. The singer.”

Dick shoots Lew a reproachful look above the rim of his reading glasses, as if Lew had printed the inappropriate definition on the page himself, and goes quietly back to his crossword. Lew considers putting on his shoes and heading out, but he walks over to the sofa instead. He sits down, running his arm behind Dick’s shoulders and leaning in to steal a peek. The puzzle is still at the very beginning, only a few words marked down in Dick’s pointy handwriting.

“Give me another one,” Lew says. The page is a blur from up close and his glasses are far away, but he’s happy enough being fed definitions like in a quiz show.

“Aren’t you going to the store?” Dick asks, gently kicking the tip of Lew’s slipper with his sock-clad toe.

“In a little while. Are you coming?”

“I should get back to work,” Dick hesitates, looking at the dark TV which, when turned on, produces only a channel out of three amidst a sea of static.

“I could use the help,” Lew insists, touching Dick’s arm. If they’d told him forty years ago that one day the thought of Dick alone on the roof would terrify him—hell, if they’d told him _one_ year ago—he wouldn’t have believed it. “I’m walking.”

“Are you?”

“It’s a nice day.”

“Yeah,” Dick admits, his smile as blurry as the crossword print as he looks out the window, at the glorious slice of blue shining over their fields. “It is.”

Lew rests his chin on Dick’s shoulder, breathing in the smell of his aftershave, which hasn’t changed since Lew got him that first bottle from Galeries Lafayette in ’51, right after Dick’s second and final discharge.

“How’s the California state tree look?”

“Fourth letter is U, last letter is A.”

“Ah. Sequoia, then.”

Around six o’clock Daniel’s car stops in front of the gate that marks the beginning of their property. The gate is not locked, the two halves kept together by a simple latch. Daniel drives the car inside and stops to close the gate behind him, then the car rumbles happily up the long drive.

Dan is every bit a Nixon, dark-haired and stocky with a tan complexion that turns ruddy at the slightest provocation, be it alcohol or sports or talking politics. Kathy contributed her green eyes and that sharp Page nose that made her father look like a bird but doesn’t look nearly as stern on Dan’s face. He is by all means a handsome man—a fact that used to make Lew stupidly proud when Danny was growing up—and even more so in a suit and tie. His expensive shoes click loudly on the gravel pathway.

“Hi, Dad,” Daniel says, pulling Lew into a loose hug. Courtesy of Lew’s recent weight loss, now his son feels twice as big and strong as he did the last time they met.

The second hug is for Dick. Lew still remembers a period when hugs had been demoted to handshakes, and it comes to mind every time he sees the two of them like this, the memory sparking a tiny spasm of outrage. He would take off with his beautiful fiancée on his arm, Dan would, every bit a Nixon in the brazen way he’d leave the mess behind for someone else to clean up, Dick heartbroken and Lew pretending not to see.

“Come inside,” Lew says, clapping Daniel’s shoulder. “How was the drive?”

“Same as usual,” Dan answers, letting himself be led into the house, with Dick following a few steps behind. He’s got a Mountain Dew bottle in his hand, an old joke. He must have grabbed it at the store on his way to the hill, because it’s still icy cold.

They sit outside, at the ironwork table where Dick and Lew eat their meals on summer nights or whenever the temperature allows it. Later the three of them will have dinner inside, at the larger table, but aperitif in the backyard is a tradition.

“Lynn says hi,” Daniel announces as he pours soda in the wine glasses, the sentence met with a silent nod from Lew and a polite mumbling from Dick. There’s no way in hell that she would send her greetings, but three can play the game. “Cheers.”

“Cheers,” they echo, clinking their glasses. 

The carbonated drink rolls down Lew’s throat, prickling the back of his tongue. It’s the diet version and it tastes fake-sugary like chewing gum, but it’s the sweetest thing Lew’s had in a while and his brain is tricked into releasing a pleasure wave in response.

“What’s with the ladder?” Dan asks, pointing a thumb above his shoulder.

The question earns him a glance from Dick, but it’s Lew who explains.

“The major decided to wage war on the TV antenna. Beat it to submission like he did the Nazis.”

“Interesting,” Dan smiles. “What’s the outlook, Major?”

“Still working on it,” Dick answers noncommittally.

Dan swirls his glass as if it contained wine, which was never a feature of their aperitifs, not even many years back, when Lew would still sneak into the kitchen at night to steal secret sips from the spoiled relics of Hermann Göring’s cellar.

“Why don’t I give you a hand there, Dick. It’s a two-man job anyway.”

“Don’t worry,” Dick replies, throwing Lew a look that says he knows exactly what’s going on. “Your father can help.”

“You leave me out of this. I’m for dumping the goddamn thing.”

“Nonsense. It can be repaired.”

“It’s more ancient than we are.”

“So? You don’t dump something because it’s old.”

“You do. And then you resettle in Santa Monica with a young friend and let them siphon off all your money.”

For a moment it seems that the joke will land flat and spoil the atmosphere, but Lew knows that _that_ is not what Dick is unsure about, that nothing short of actually eloping to California with a bronzed Adonis could convince Dick that he’s lost his stake in Lew’s heart. And sure enough Dick laughs at the suggestion, a heartwarming sound Lew hasn’t heard since the doctor pronounced Dick’s running career finished. Dick reaches out under the table and what started as a pat quickly turns into a caress, his thumb tracing soothing circles on the inner side of Lew’s knee.

Lew smiles, mollified.

In the end the antenna is fixed, thanks to Daniel biting the bullet and saving the thing from a one-way trip to the dumpster and Lew from premature widowhood. Dan’s suit looks a little roughed up afterwards, pants crinkled and smudged with black soot, but he doesn’t seem to care.

While the two of them are at work, exchanging loud feedback between the TV room and the top of the roof, Lew pulls the roast chicken out of the oven, tries the skin with a fork and pushes the tray back in, adding ten more minutes to the timer. Meanwhile he cuts the iceberg salad, peels and chops the hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, baby spinach and green onions, and fries the bacon until it looks nice and crispy. He assembles the salad and coats the top layer with a ladleful of homemade Italian dressing right as the oven timer dings. He switches the chicken for a tray of almost done scalloped potatoes, and by the time everybody shows up, the potatoes have made a nice brown crust and dinner is ready to be served.

“Dad, come on,” Dan protests at the sight of the small feast. “We said leftovers.”

“There were none,” Lew replies placidly. “This one vacuums the fridge like you wouldn’t believe.”

“I don’t,” Dan assures Dick, pulling back a chair. “Wasn’t that more of your department, anyway?”

“It was. Let me tell you something, after sobering up you’d think giving up cake and mayonnaise would be a walk in the park. Bullshit. I dreamed I ate a whole stick of butter last night.”

Dan laughs politely. “Did you ever? Eat a whole stick of butter?”

Lew smiles and doesn’t answer.

“All right,” Dan says, helping himself to the salad bowl, “but next time I’ll bring takeaway.”

“Sure thing, boy. You bring in a bucket of chicken wings and I’ll stuff my face. The funeral home’s number is in the phone book.”

“Lew,” Dick warns.

Lew turns to the counter where the chicken roast is waiting to be cut, and dries his hands on a kitchen rag.

“Breast or thigh?”

The business trip put Dan in a good mood. He visits regularly these days, once a month or so; generally alone, sometimes with Katie, though the kid hasn’t been around since the new semester started at UCLA. She calls often, and she came to visit on her own once, though her parents don’t know that.

“It’s big,” Dan says obliquely, when Dick asks him about his appointment in Philadelphia. “Not naming names, but it might be our biggest case yet. We’re talking half a billion in corporate fines. They want us to represent all the top dogs too. Couple of them are looking at twenty years.”

“What is it this time?” Lew snorts, picking the bacon bits out of his salad. “A town’s worth of cancer kids? Toxic waste in chicken feed?”

Dan shakes his head, breaking a bread roll with his hands. “Pharma.”

“Jesus. Your grandfather would be proud.”

“I’d say. My commission is outrageous.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“I know what you mean, Dad,” Dan smiles. “It’s fine. The Nazis got lawyers too.”

“Kid, you don’t want to get me started on the ’Nazis got lawyers’ bit.”

“I should unleash Katie on you on that one. Dick, did you know that she was the national junior debate champion three years in a row?”

“I think you mentioned,” Dick smiles, cutting a potato slice in half. He dips his fork onto Lew’s plate, stabbing some of the bacon bits set aside in a little pile and dumping them on his own salad. Lew turns the plate around to give him easier access. He didn’t take any potatoes.

“What’s with you, Dick?” Dan asks, refilling the man’s glass with sparkling water. “You’re very quiet.”

“Am I? I’m sorry,” Dick says, but doesn’t contribute further.

Dan waves the apology away. “Tell me about the reunion. When I heard that you were dragging this grumpy cat’s ass all the way to New Orleans I thought Katie was pulling my leg.”

A month ago, Lew omitted to tell his son that they were both going to the stupid thing, dumbfounded by the same discomfort he feels to this day when he thinks of foxholes, mortar shells, parachutes. In 1980 he’d sworn that Nashville would be his first and his last, and here he was again. But eventually the news found its way to Dan, as it would.

“It was good,” Dick says, somewhat reticently. “It’s always nice, meeting the others.”

“Bunch of dinosaurs,” Lew grumbles, stabbing his chicken breast.

“It’s a strange feeling,” Dick continues, ignoring him. “You walk into the room and nobody looks familiar. Just a room full of old people. Then something changes. All these memories. Before you know it, it’s ’45 again. Do you remember that time Bull did this, do you remember that time Sobel did that. Nobody talks about the present. Nobody asks, ‘What have you been doing all these years?’ It doesn’t matter. But those three years, they matter.”

Dick stops and reaches for the water, as if embarrassed by the uncharacteristic heat in his voice. It is the longest Lew has heard him speak in days, and it doesn’t surprise him that this particular topic was the one to loosen his tongue, but there is something else to it, something covert that he can’t quite place.

“I bet you lot have got some stories to tell,” Dan says, bringing a forkful of crispy chicken skin to his mouth.

Dick nods, with a thin smile. “Some.”

“I’m still waiting for Dad to tell one. Just one. You know, to prove that he was there.”

“That’s ’cause I wasn’t,” Lew replies. “I was way at the back, with the sandmaps and the nurses.”

“That’s not true,” Dick cuts in.

Dan makes a very Nixon face, the one that says, _See? Told you_, the one of which his aunt Blanche is the undisputed master.

Lew rolls his eyes.

“Dad, all I’m saying is, it would be nice to hear some first-hand accounts. Like, didn’t your battalion ransack Goebbels’ cellar or something?”

“Göring’s,” Dick and Lew correct him at the same time. Dick lets out a chuckle, and Lew knows that he’s remembering the crazy exaltation of VE-Day, the absurd, disproportioned joy that hit them like a wagon when the news came. Lew can still feel it seep through his then-permanent hangover like a rainbow through the clouds.

“Right,” Dan smiles. “And there was something about liberating a concentration camp, too, wasn’t there?”

“Look who’s been doing his homework,” Lew grumbles.

“Nah, Katie’s our resident historian. But she got me thinking, you know. You lot should write a book,” he says, pointing a piece of bread at Dick. “Put all those memories together. Come on, why not?” he continues, seeing Lew’s face.

“Nobody cares about a—”

“Yes, they do.”

“—bunch of old farts blabbering about how they saved Freedom. Leave the past where it is,” Lew snaps.

Dan is a man of strong opinions, but if there’s a skill he’s picked up along the way—’cause God knows he didn’t inherit it from either of his parents—it’s knowing when to back off. He opens his hands in a gesture of surrender.

“You outdid yourself with the potatoes, Dad,” he offers, after an awkward silence.

“Actually,” Dick says, dragging a tiny ring of chopped green onion around the plate with his fork, “there was a historian at the reunion. A professor at the University of New Orleans. He said he was interested in the story of the Company.”

“That guy,” Lew snorts. “Going around flat-out asking people if he could snoop in on their lives. Jesus _Christ_.”

“They’re called interviews, Lew,” Dick corrects him patiently. “They’re for the book.”

Dick’s condescending tone incenses him even further. Lew catches Dan’s eyes, his slight frown above a tense smile, and it reminds him of the way Dick would look at him on their rare nights out in ’47 or ’48, before Lew sobered up: like he could cause a scene at any time.

“_The_ book? What book?”

“The one he’s writing. He’s collecting the material.”

“Who’s going to pour his heart out to a stranger just to see his name in a footnote?”

“Lipton’s doing it. Gordon, Malarkey. Guarnere too. And some of the others. He—” Dick hesitates, then trudges on, “asked me too.”

Lew scoffs, incredulous. “Oh, _please—_”

“And I said yes.”

In the stunned silence that follows, Lew gets very close—the closest, in fact, he’s been in ages—to storming off in one of those dramatic exits that felt so rewarding when his body was routinely full of booze to the brim, and still felt decently good for a couple of decades after that. He’s not sure what his face is showing, but Dan looks worried now, like Lew might be having a second heart attack, and part of Lew wants to stand up holding his left arm and leave them to worry, if only for a minute, ’cause that would teach ’em.

Instead he bottles it up and picks up his fork. “Save room for the pie,” he tells Dan. “You’re not filling up on potatoes and skipping dessert, are you.”

Later, after Daniel has left with a whole bounty of Tupperwares, Lew retreats into the bathroom and brushes his teeth for a long time. He can hear the water running inside the pipes while Dick washes the dishes—Dan offered to help, but he was gently turned down. Lew is still in the bathroom when the water stops running, still there when Dick steps in. Lew puts down the floss and meets the other’s eyes in the mirror.

Dick has a sheepish, apologetic face, and when he sees that Lew’s pissed-off scowl is not coming back he simply leans in, chest to Lew’s back, running his arms around Lew’s waist.

“I should have told you,” he offers, because if there’s one thing Dick Winters needs even more than feeling like he’s indestructible, it’s closure. “Before accepting. I’m sorry.”

“All right,” Lew says, patting his hand. “No need to talk about it.”

“Lew—”

“No, don’t Lew me.”

“There’s so few of us left. And Stephen’s serious about the book.”

“Is that why you’re doing this? To please _Stephen_?”

Dick sighs. “Yes, Lew, I’m doing it to please a half-stranger.”

“Good,” Lew snaps, even though he knows that the conversation has taken an absurd turn. “Hope he won’t be too put off when he learns that this paratrooper hero is a faggot married to another paratrooper faggot. You know what, why don’t you lead with that? See if he wants to put _that_ in his book.”

“_That_ has nothing to do with the book.”

“Our life?”

“Our life after the war.”

“You’re losing your memory, honey,” Lew snarls, the unfamiliar endearment rolling awkwardly on his tongue, like cheap candy. “I fucked you all throughout the war.”

Dick looks away, from the memory or Lew himself, he can’t tell. Normally it’s easier to pretend that they didn’t fall into this thing while Lew was still married to Kathy and with an infant child awaiting his return; the story they’ve been telling people—the few who know—starts in 1945. _We came back and we stuck together._

“I’ll leave that part out,” Dick promises. “Nobody cares.”

“Like they didn’t in New Orleans.”

Dick frowns. “They didn’t.”

“God, it feels like I’m talking to a child here.”

Dick misremembers it: people did ask. They weren’t given the whole answer, sure, but they did ask. And Lew hated every second of those stunted conversations, every polite, puzzled look they got, every ‘_I see’_ meeting the discovery that yes, the two of them had been living together for the past forty years, and no, Dick had never found the right girl, too bad for him but hey, at least they had each other. The best of friends, indeed.

“He’s not a Mr. Nobody, for Christ’s sake. You do this thing, and then it’s out. You might as well put it in the parish paper.”

“But what if I can—”

“You can’t. You fucking can’t.”

He pulls Dick’s arms open, stepping out of the embrace and the bathroom. Dick doesn’t follow him. While he puts on his pajamas, he hears the sound of Dick brushing his teeth. He usually hums a tune while he does that, but he’s not humming now.

Lew is in bed with his book when Dick comes out. Dick strips down to his underwear, carefully drapes his half-folded clothes on the backrest of the chair and fishes the heliotrope pajamas from under his pillow. They make him look even paler than he normally does, an ugly match for his translucent complexion, but Lew likes how they wrap his body, loose and smooth and utterly domestic. Among the many things nobody told him when he started this thing with Dick in ’42, is that one day he would stop and gape and feel fuzzy all over at the sight of his best friend in lavender pajamas.

Dick too has a book on his nightstand (_Pegasus Bridge_, by the magnificent Stephen), but he doesn’t touch it. He sits half-propped up against his pillow, throws Lew a glance, and sighs softly.

“Do I get my goodnight kiss?”

Lew licks the pad of his middle finger and turns a page, already inclined towards reconciliation.

“If you come get it.”

Dick leans forward. A bony hand grazes Lew’s chin and cups the opposite side of his face, pulling him in. Gentle fingers pry Lew’s reading glasses away. The kiss is simple and familiar, but longer than usual, and it feels awfully like an apology. Lew runs his hand along the side of Dick’s neck and kisses back.

“Does it bother you so much?” Dick asks, and Lew knows that right now, right here, he has been given the power to stop this thing from happening.

“Yes,” he answers.

Dick nods. He doesn’t seem disappointed; a touch sad, perhaps.

“I’ll call him tomorrow.”

“Thank you.” Lew blindly searches for Dick’s hand on the coverlet, finds it and brings it to his mouth. “I’m sorry I raised my voice.”

Dick lingers in Lew’s personal space, and Lew wonders how far the reconciliation is meant to go. He feels stronger and more desirable than he has in three decades, but Dick has been hard to grab ahold of ever since he stopped running. He drops Dick’s hand and moves his fingers up to the other’s flank, cupping a slim hip through the fabric of the pajamas.

Dick pulls back slowly, because if he did it too fast there’s a minimal chance that he might break Lew’s heart, and they’re both way too old to take that chance.

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

Lew turns off his bedside lamp shortly after. He’s lost all interest in his book, anyway.

He doesn’t sleep well.

\+ + +

Lew wakes up to an empty bed.

The heliotrope pajamas are folded under the pillow. He gets up and puts on his dressing gown before heading downstairs, where a note pinned on the fridge under the Eiffel Tower magnet tells him that Dick has gone out for a walk.

Lew wishes that he were the kind of man who didn’t fret over small things—the unfazed, imperturbable pillar of strength his father was so sure of being himself. He might have gotten closer to that in his youth, when not caring made it easy enough, but he’s given up on the pretence long since. So he doesn’t even try to resist the urge of going and checking on Dick’s shoe rack, and only when he’s made sure that all pairs of running shoes are accounted for does he allow himself to relax.

He starts making breakfast.

By the time Dick is back Lew has already eaten, smoked three cigarettes outside, changed into day clothes, and browsed through the newspaper twice, though he hasn’t touched the crossword. Dick’s sandwich looks sad on its plate, bread cold and ham warm.

“I can make new coffee,” Lew offers. “That one’s stone cold.”

“Don’t bother,” Dick says, pouring himself a cup. He comes to sit next to Lew on the sofa with his plate and his mug.

“Good walk?”

“Mm-mm.”

“Where did you go?”

“To the gas station and back.”

That’s his usual running route, and it makes an outrageously long walk, but then again Lew has never been much of a sportsman. What is sort of ironic is how well Lew has preserved his joints after four decades of shunning physical exercise, so much so that now he could take up running if he wanted, even make a regular hobby of it, if he could stand the thought of doing it alone.

“Wanna do the crossword?” Lew asks, but Dick shakes his head. He looks a thousand miles away.

They sit in silence until Dick’s sandwich is all eaten. Lew feels the awkwardness of the moment crawl under his skin, acutely aware that something’s been shattered, or at least misplaced. He runs his arm behind Dick’s back and touches the thin hair at the base of his skull, nothing more than an ordinary caress. Dick leans into it for a second, but pulls away immediately after, bending his body forward as if ready to spring up.

“Stay a moment,” Lew says softly.

“I’ve got a few calls to make,” Dick replies in his business voice, the one he used to reserve for employees and platoon men alike.

“It’s too early in Louisiana,” Lew points out, reflexively.

Dick tightens his jaw for just a second, but it’s enough. Lew pulls back, chastised, like a dog caught in front of the pieces of a broken vase.

“Thank you for breakfast,” Dick says, and gets up. He comes back from his study half an hour later, only to announce that he’s going to his sister’s, and soon after that the car is purring at a judicious speed down the hill.

Alone in the house, Lew considers the long stretch of morning unfolding ahead and finds it blank and boring. He opens the fridge to get ideas for lunch, but it is full of leftovers. Lew eyes the whipped cream in its pitcher on the shelf and his gaze is drawn to the three quarters of apple pie, last night’s dessert, sitting on the kitchen counter. He would love a slice, but he has relapsed into drinking enough times to know that he will never be a man of moderation, one who can have a small bite of what’s bad for him and not let it be followed by another one and another one until the whole pie’s gone.

So he walks away from the temptation: back to the living room first, but it doesn’t seem far enough, and after some brief wandering he finds himself in Dick’s study, where no lingering food smells will trigger his restlessness.

He sits in Dick’s chair and looks up to the roof. The room retains a faint memory of Dick’s aftershave, a tribute to the recent past when Dick would spend most of his waking hours in here, nurturing his thriving business into adulthood, and then steering it through the motions of the changing economy and the oil crisis. He’s given up most of the work now, splitting it equally between his long-time deputy and Ann’s oldest—who will, after all, take over the whole thing—but he still calls in regularly, has a say in major decisions, makes presidential appearances at Christmas and so on. The mid-year budget review is on the desk, a thin folder lined with yellow post-its.

On the leather desk mat sits Dick’s notebook, a pen stuck inside to mark a spot a few pages in.

Dick is an intensely private man, but forty years together have a way of blurring the borders of personal space. Still, Lew wouldn’t dare if he wasn’t bored and irked by the lack of sleep. He considers pros and cons and figures that at this stage, breaching Dick’s privacy is a lesser evil than stuffing his face with pie.

He opens the notebook to the marked page. The last paragraph makes him frown, then draws a reluctant smile out of him.

_“That night I thanked God for seeing me through that day of days and prayed I would make it through D plus one. And if somehow I managed to get home again, I promised God and myself that I would find a quiet piece of land someplace and spend the rest of my life in peace.”_

Lew turns a few pages backwards, catches his own name in a random paragraph, then flips the notepad over and starts again at the beginning. What he finds gives a bittersweet, unpleasant tug to the old battered spot in his chest.

_“Like most veterans who have shared the hardship of combat, I live with flashbacks—distant memories of an attack on a battery of German artillery on D-Day, an assault on Carentan, a bayonet attack on a dike in Holland, the cold of Bastogne._

_As my wartime buddies join their fallen comrades at an alarming rate, distant memories resurface. The hard times fade and the flashbacks go back to friendly times, to buddies with whom I shared a unique bond, to men who are my brothers in every sense of the word.”_

He reads the rest and then he gets up, puts everything back exactly as he found it, and goes to make a phone call.

Dick is back before lunch time. Lew takes the leftovers out of the fridge when he hears the car approach, and by the time Dick comes in the salad is on the table and the chicken is warming up in the oven.

“Annie sends her love,” Dick announces, placing a fat brown paper bag on the counter. Lew takes a peek. It’s peaches, velvety fur shining red and orange.

“Thanks.”

The little trip and the chat with his sister must have helped, because Dick sounds more cheerful now than he did in the morning. Lew takes a breath.

“Speaking of sisters. I was on the phone with Blanche,” he says, turning off the oven. 

“Oh? How’s she?”

“Fine. Her back is what it is, but apparently Carlos or Pablo or whatever her latest toy is called has golden hands. I’ll spare you the details.”

“Yes, please,” Dick smiles, walking to the sink to wash his hands.

“Anyway. She gave me such an earful for not visiting, I’ll have to show up in San Francisco some time soon.”

“She’ll love it,” Dick replies, and if he’s wondering why he’s not included in the plan, at least nominally, he doesn’t say. “When are you going?”

“Depends.”

“On?”

“On when your friend the amazing historian’s coming to interview you.”

Dick turns his head. The tap is still open, water running.

Lew walks up to Dick and runs his arms around Dick’s waist like Dick did the night before, pressing their bodies flush together. Dick bends his neck reflexively to the side.

“I’m not going to sit around and listen to you talk about the war and pretend like we’re best buddies—”

“But we are,” Dick interrupts him.

“You know what I mean. Whatever, I’m saying I’m not gonna stop you.”

“What changed your mind?”

Lew tucks his chin on Dick’s shoulder. “You want to do it. I think—Well. I think it’s stupid. But you saw me through all sorts of stupid shit, so you should have this one.”

Dick pushes the tap closed and rests his wrists on the edge of the sink. Then he exhales, leaning his head back on Lew’s shoulder. “I’ll leave you out of it. Not the war, but—the rest.”

“All right.”

“Although…”

Dick doesn’t finish the sentence, and is silent for a moment after that. When Lew feels soft spasms shake Dick’s belly under his hands, he realizes that Dick’s laughing quietly.

“What?”

“Just thinking of Lynnette’s face. You know, if it _did_ come out. Not that it will. But if it _did_—”

“Jesus,” Lew cusses happily. “If her charity dames found out? That her father-in-law is—”

“One of _those_,” Dick says, making a passable imitation of Lynn from that infamous dinner night that had Lew not speaking to his son for three years afterwards.

“Now I _want _you to do it. We’ll send her a signed copy.”

Lew wraps his arms a little tighter around Dick’s midsection, riding the laughter together until it dies in a contented sigh. He presses his lips behind Dick’s ear.

“Let’s make peace, mm?” he murmurs.

“We weren’t fighting.”

“Weren’t we?”

“I’m too old to fight with you.”

“Then let’s make love,” Lew insists, kissing the side of Dick’s neck. “You’re not too old for that.”

“You’re charming,” Dick rebuts, but he seems to realize halfway through the sentence that for all his joking tone, Lew is not joking. He turns his head slightly, and Lew’s lips brush his jaw. Lew gives it a small, playful bite.

“It’s—the middle of the day,” Dick argues. He sounds disconcerted, which amuses Lew to no end.

“We’ve got blinds, don’t we?” Lew’s hand travels down Dick’s side, spreading warm and large over his hip bone.

“Nix,” Dick sighs. He raises a wet hand, hooking it around the back of Lew’s neck. The old nickname hasn’t made an appearance in so long that it’s a turn-on in its own right, inextricably tied as it is to memories of clothed fumbling in dark storage rooms and quick fucks in makeshift billets.

“Turn around,” Lew says, making space, and when they’re front to front he cups Dick’s face in his hands and kisses him with an eagerness he hasn’t felt in months—no, years. His faulty heart takes a second to catch up with all that emotion.

“Food will get cold,” Dick teases.

Lew thinks up a funny retort, something about taking the food upstairs and eating it on the bed like sulky teenagers, but his brain works against him and for a second all he can think of is the two of them in bed, making sweet sweet love not to each other, but to that delicious apple pie.

“We can it warm it up again.” He smiles, a little out of breath with anticipation. “I’m not hungry, anyway.”

\+ + +

It would be doing it a disservice to call Blanche’s house a house: it’s a mansion, rather, one of those decadent places that have consistently existed throughout history, where young ladies of good family debut in grand social events and old ladies of rich means let themselves be petted into a serene third age by Latino masseuses.

“I keep forgetting how much of a waste of space this place is,” Lew says by way of a greeting.

Blanche shows off the white, perfect smile she didn’t have as a girl and pulls him into a hug. She’s skinny, almost bony now after a lifetime of being curvaceous, but Lew always thought that plumpness only padded her sharp edges, keeping them from sight, so she actually looks more like herself now. And she’s become a blonde—Blanche Nixon, the prettiest brunette of the ’41 New York scene. If only Doris could see.

“Some of us like to live in a house that doesn’t smell like cow shit,” Blanche says by way of a welcome, kissing his cheek.

“You _live_ here?” Lew retorts. “I thought it was just your breeding grounds.”

“You know me, Lew. I’m a modest woman. I sleep, eat, and fuck in the same place.” She smirks impishly. “Well, different rooms of the same place.”

Lew runs his arm around Blanche’s shoulders, pulling her close as they step inside. He loves the dry, foul-mouthed bitch with every inch of his being, a fact he’s reminded of by the warmth that’s spreading like a fire across his chest.

“You’re many things, sis, but modest you’re not.”

“Yeah, well. Perhaps,” she admits, wrapping her hand around Lew’s waist. She pinches the spot, once and then a second time, as if to make sure of what she’s found.

“Lew,” she says in a voice full of mock surprise. “I’m impressed. You put Dick on cooking duty?”

Lew snorts. “I’m alive, aren’t I?”

“Barely,” Blanche reminds him, slipping away from under Lew’s arm to precede him into the house. She moves in a sort of perpetual, controlled slow motion, smooth enough to trick a new acquaintance, though of course Lew knows better. “And don’t be unfair. I’ve had Dick’s cooking.”

“The raw salad or the toast?”

“Either. Both?” She waves a hand dismissively. “Drop the suitcase. We’ll have Diego bring it up to your room.”

Lew wants to protest that he’s able to carry his own suitcase up a flight of stairs, but Blanche is already waltzing through the living room and out onto the veranda, which shines pool-blue and clay-red like a postcard. A man in his late twenties is sitting on a lounge chair, tan as a brick in a flowery beach shirt and blue bermudas. He gets up on his feet as soon as he hears Lew and Blanche come out—a youthful, overly athletic spring in his step.

“Darling, you’ve met my brother, haven’t you?” Blanche chirps, touching the man’s arm. 

“No, I haven’t,” the man says, sticking out his right hand. His handshake is firm and business-like, quite unlike his soft, unguarded smile. He’s handsome, of course.

“Diego, sweetie, be a dear and help Lew with his suitcase. We put him up in the green room.”

Lew throws a glance over his shoulder, where Diego’s thighs are walking off one muscled step at a time, and scoffs softly.

“It was the other one,” he says when the man is out of earshot. “The one I met. Jesús or something.”

Blanche gives out a little laugh. “Jesús? No. That was _ages_ ago.”

“I may be mixing the names. Shorty, great ass?”

“Jesús,” Blanche confirms, pouring herself three fingers of scotch and hesitating in front of the mini bar. She slaps Lew’s arm with the back of her hand. “That was a _year_ ago. You never show your face anymore, you barely call. I don’t even know what you drink these days.” She opens her arms at the mini bar, as if that could sum up the whole extent of her dismay. “Soda?”

“Water, mostly. Apple cider once in a blue moon.”

Blanche clucks her tongue despondently. “Will this kill you?” she asks, picking up a can of Coke from the mini bar. She winces when she straightens up, but when Lew extends a hand to touch her lower back she takes a step aside.

“Eventually,” Lew answers, grabbing the can. “Let’s not tell the major.”

They sit on the lounge chairs by the pool, stretching their legs. Blanche’s are thin and white, veined with blue streams like Stilton cheese.

“I’m sure he wouldn’t mind a little extra meat to hold on to,” Blanche considers, nursing her glass. “He’s always liked you chubby.”

For all the weight he’s lost Lew is still chubby, but he doesn’t feel like arguing the point, not when Blanche’s remark has driven them so close to Lew’s sex life, which he’s not comfortable discussing with his little sister or indeed anyone.

“He likes me better alive, I’m told,” he says bringing the Coke up to his mouth. It’s shockingly sweet—nostalgic and delicious. He takes an eager sip.

She reaches out to wrap her fingers around his arm, stroking it fondly with her thumb. Her smile is an equally fond ruby stain on her face. Thin wrinkles on her upper lip ruin its perfect, heart-shaped line.

“He should be here to protect his investment.”

“His name’s on the will,” Lew shrugs, with a callousness that’s all pretense, an old joke. “He’s busy these days, I told you.”

“You did,” Blanche says, smacking her lips. She seems on the verge of asking, but then she doesn’t.

“It’s nice to have you here,” she says instead. 

The corner of Lew’s mouth curls up a fraction. He covers her hand with his own and for a long while they sit like that, hand in hand, sipping at their drinks.

He calls Dick around dinner time. Lew’s already a little homesick. In his youth he could be away for months and barely feel the distance, but now a few hours is all it takes to unbalance him. He would hate it if it didn’t feel so inevitable, and sweet too.

Dick picks up at the second ring.

“Hey, red,” Lew murmurs, heart leaping softly at the sound of Dick’s voice.

“Hey, Lew. How was the flight?”

“Quiet. Landed early.”

“The weather good over there?”

“Sure, if you like hot and humid.”

“And we do, don’t we,” Dick smiles in the mouthpiece. “How’s Blanche?”

“Happy. Thin as a fiddle. In good company.”

“Is she?”

“Oh, yeah. You should see that pair of Puerto Rican legs moving about. Hot stuff, I tell you.”

“I’m sure you took a good look for the both of us.”

“I did,” Lew acknowledges, chuckling. “I have to make sure my sister’s in good hands, don’t I?”

“You’re the best of brothers, Lew.”

They’re quiet for a moment. Lew twirls the phone wire around his finger, listening to Dick’s careful breathing on the other end and thinking of something to say, but Dick speaks first.

“How was your day?”

“Good. I went for a walk in the neighborhood. Took a nap afterwards, but I forgot to set the alarm. I woke up two hours later.”

“You know you can’t sleep at night when you do that.”

“It’s okay. I’ll be up for a while, find myself something to do. Maybe I’ll write you that love letter. You know, the one I’ve owed you since Jersey?”

“I’d rather you slept,” Dick replies, sounding amused, but Lew shushes him. 

“_You_ should go to bed, Major. Be nice and perky for your big interview.”

“Ah, about that.” Dick hesitates. “Something came up. He’s not coming tomorrow.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. We had to postpone to next week. Sorry about that.”

“It’s all right.” Lew untwirls the phone wire, suppressing a sigh. “I can change my flight and stay a little longer. It’s not like Blanche’s going to kick me out.”

Dick is silent for a moment. “Or you could come home.”

“Dick,” Lew murmurs.

“I’m just saying, you could.”

“What would I do while the two of you talk about the good ol’ days?”

“Anything. Sit with us, even.”

“Yeah, right. And besides,” Lew continues, “does he even know that I live there?”

“I—” Dick sighs. “I don’t think so.”

“There. See?”

“Lew, it’s your story too, and I’d love to have you here. But I won’t insist.”

Lew shakes his head, though Dick of course can’t see him. “Gotta go,” he says, looking over his shoulder. “I think dinner’s ready.”

“All right,” Dick replies. “Send my love to Blanche.”

“I will. And you go too. Send the whores packing and tuck in for the night.”

“I don’t know,” Dick replies, dropping his voice as if to keep it private, though Lew’s sure that he’s alone. “I paid in advance. Seems like a waste.”

“In advance, Jesus Christ,” Lew chuckles. “Forty years with yours truly, and you haven’t learned a thing.”

“Not a thing,” Dick confirms. “Night, love.”

“Good night.”

He joins Blanche for dinner. Diego has either been invited to give them some privacy or is out minding his own business—which is a pity, because Lew likes the guy. He tends to like Blanche’s young friends, partly because they’re unrepentantly handsome, partly because Blanche picks them sweet and hungry and vulnerable but always with something of a righteous streak thrown in the mix—and that mix Lew has always found irresistible.

“So, what’s keeping my dear brother-in-law?” Blanche asks when Lew relays Dick’s greetings. “Another cadet class?”

“No,” Lew huffs, “no West Point brats this time. He’s got this project going.”

Blanche senses his hesitation and is drawn forward by curiosity like a cat. “Business project?”

“No. Of the—mm, artistic variety.”

“_Artistic_? Dick?” Blanche chuckles in disbelief. “He took up painting or what?”

“It’s a book,” Lew answers. “This writer, he’s flying in from New Orleans to interview him. Dick has a list of topics this long.”

“How exciting.”

Lew drapes his napkin over his lap with excessive care, folding the hem and smoothing it down with his hands. “There was a hiccup.” He clears his throat. “You don’t mind if I stay a couple days longer, do you?”

“Of course not,” she answers, then smiles and leans forward, a cutting remark ready on her lips like a blade in a knife thrower’s hand.

“So, who’s this guy you’re avoiding?”

“It’s not about him,” Lew mumbles, feeling exposed.

“The book, then? What is it? A piece on homosexual country life?”

“It’s about the war,” Lew answers, glaring her way. “How brave our old company was and all that crap.”

“Oh, Lew,” she purrs. “But you were. Brave and all that crap.”

“Well,” Lew grumbles. “Maybe I don’t wanna hear about it over and over again.”

She pats his arm in a gesture that’s half sympathy, half condescending superiority—the one quality of their father’s that Blanche has got in spades.

“Your poor, dear husband. He’s got to talk about it with _someone_, hasn’t he?”

\+ + +

Lew rings the bell, leaning slightly on the pulled-up handle of his suitcase as he waits. Through the curtained window, he sees Dick’s silhouette get off his armchair.

“Lew,” Dick says, looking surprised. Lew had the cab driver drop him way ahead of the gate, and he walked up the drive.

“Hey.” Lew smiles, a little short of breath, and he takes a step onwards, straight into Dick’s personal space. They’ve never been the most tactile of couples, but a week apart warrants a little extra closeness, especially after a long uphill walk has reminded you that most of your lifespan is behind your back.

Dick puts a hand on Lew’s arm as a cautionary measure, but smiles back. “We’ve got guests,” he says softly. He throws a cautious look over his shoulder.

Lew could tell from the moment Dick opened the door, from the acrid cigarette smell lingering inside the house, and his stomach churns a little.

“Well,” he says. “I’d better say hi, then.”

Dick’s hand on his arm doesn’t relent, soft but not lax, not even when Lew tenses to move forward.

“I’m happy you came,” he offers.

“I know,” Lew answers. “I couldn’t leave you alone with a younger man, could I?” He smirks, brushing Dick’s cheek briefly with his thumb, and walks in.

Mixed with burnt tobacco is the smell of coffee, the soothing, post-prandial aroma that is a regular fixture of their afternoons. There’s pie on the coffee table, which Dick must have picked up at the store. For all Nix loves to publicly bash Dick’s cooking, he is good at baking uncomplicated, hearty pies, but he would never dare serve one of them to a guest.

The guest in question, a middle-aged man not much older than Dan, stands up to greet him. He has a friendly smile pasted on his face, the same he sported when he introduced himself at the reunion, though Lew can tell that it’s veined with fleeting confusion at the sight of Lew and his suitcase. 

He resists the urge to grit his teeth. He doesn’t dislike the man—no more than he dislikes anyone, really. In New Orleans he seemed nice, friendly, genuinely interested. But he’s sitting in their living room, eating their pie, and he reminds Lew of things he’s carefully not looked at for a lifetime. And now he’s looking at Lew like he can’t quite understand how Lew fits in the picture—which is _Lew’s_ picture, _Lew’s_ life, and what business does this stranger have questioning it, albeit silently?

Lew forcibly reminds himself that this—him being here—is nobody’s idea but his own, and shakes the guy’s hand with a measure of warmth.

“Nice to see you again, Cap—Mr. Nixon,” the professor corrects himself, remembering the first time they met. “Are you going to join us?”

“For a minute,” Lew allows.

“Would you like a slice of pie, Lew?” Dick asks, already half-turning on his heels.

Lew would love a slice of pie all right, but he had a cinnamon bun at the airport that morning—a greasy, disgusting thing that tasted like industrial sweetener. “Just a cup, if there’s coffee left.”

“Sure thing. Sit down.”

The guest is occupying Lew’s armchair, the one from which Lew watches his morning news and his Monday MacGyver, so Lew takes the sofa instead, mentally smirking as he occupies Dick’s favorite spot. There’s a dip in the surface, and the cushion is still warm. Next to the dessert plates and the coffee mugs and the ashtray, handwritten and printed papers are spread all over the table.

“Cigarette?” the professor offers, but Lew declines. He had a few smokes on the way from the airport, and besides, Dick has patiently worked him out of the habit of smoking during meals and snacks.

“We were just going through Dick’s notes on Brécourt Manor,” the man informs him. “I have to say, it’s a real shame that there’s no detailed mention of this action anywhere.”

“You’ll have to throw me a rope here, Professor,” Lew replies. “My memory’s not what it used to be.”

“I’m talking about the battery of .88s overlooking Utah Beach,” the other man suggests, gently. “When Easy Company—”

“Oh, yeah. That one.”

“It’s outrageous,” he continues, looking up at Dick who’s just walked back into the room with Lew’s coffee mug in his hand. “Have you read Marshall’s account?” He produces a dog-eared book from his leather bag, opening it at a marked page, and puts on the reading glasses hanging at his neck. “_Captain R. D. Winters hiked to Utah Beach, borrowed four Shermans from the 4th Infantry Division, and sicced them on the enemy guns. _There. That’s all.”

Dick scoffs. “I met Marshall two days after D-Day. Gave him a first-hand account myself.”

“That’s completely inaccurate,” Lew confirms, taking the mug as Dick sits next to him on the sofa. “You were just a lieutenant at that point.”

“I mean—” the historian starts, before realizing that Lew has made a joke. “Right. That too.”

“Not to mention you were the one who came back with the tanks,” Dick replies.

“Really?” Stephen asks, reaching for his pen. “I didn’t—”

“You can leave that out,” Lew says dryly.

Stephen clears his throat. “Carwood Lipton’s account is very good too, very detailed,” he says. “I think we can do this story proper justice.” He produces a thin smile, and Dick smiles fondly back.

“That’s all we want.”

Lew looks away and swallows a sip of coffee, which tastes more bitter than ever. “Brécourt,” he murmurs pensively along the rim of his cup. “It’s where we shot that French kid, isn’t it?”

“It was an accident,” Dick replies, stiffly.

“Sure was,” Lew agrees.

The professor perks his ears. “What happened?”

“The owner’s family came out of the property with their hands up, some trigger-happy paratrooper freaked out and shot the boy. In the back, no less.”

“It was an accident,” Dick repeats, more slowly. “There were German soldiers around.”

Lew has a cutting retort on his tongue—something about the German soldiers being in the act of surrendering, hands high above their heads—but Dick’s look makes him desist. He simply nods. “Sure.”

He retreats to his coffee cup while the historian and Dick get back to work. Over the years, Dick has amassed an impressive amount of notes on Brécourt and other actions West Point invited him to present to the cadets, but what’s really impressive is how exact his memory is. Each small detail, the position of each man, the sequence of actions that led to the final result. Ambrose keeps asking and Lew, who’s never attended one of Dick’s lectures, is at once amazed and humbled by the startling precision of Dick’s answers.

Dick looks rejuvenated—eyes bright, voice firm, no trace of the lingering melancholy that’s been subduing him for weeks. He didn’t look like this at the reunion. Happy, yes, and proud too, but this is different. It brings to mind memories of when Dick first started his business, when he would work a hundred hours a week to nurture it like a mother hen, dedicating a steady number of those hours to submitting his methodically noted plans and calculations to Lew’s judgement.

_Dick, I don’t know the first thing about business,_ Lew would say, trying to shun the responsibility of contributing to any of Dick’s choices for fear that they might fail. _Never have. Look how the factory went belly up._

_It doesn’t matter_, Dick would reply. _I just need you to listen._

At some point Lew dozes off. It’s been a long day already, what with the early rise and all, and he hasn’t had his afternoon nap. (In Jersey Dick used to make fun of his naps, called them a waste of time—until Lew proved to him how well that time could be spent if only Dick cared to give it a try.)

When he comes to, the conversation has drifted off from military actions and entered a different, more personal territory. He’s been dreaming about New Jersey, he feels, and the conversation must have blended smoothly into the fabric of his dreams, because when he’s finally conscious Lew realizes that he’s been hearing them talk for a while.

“... at the nitration works. Lewis offered me a job and a place to stay. Back then the town was still called Nixon.”

“That was generous of him.”

“Yeah—yeah, I suppose it was. It was a good arrangement. A good job.”

“Were you happy there? I’ll be honest, I’m having a hard time picturing you behind a desk.”

“I was—” A pause. “Where I wanted to be. You see the difference?”

“I do. And then?”

“Then the factory closed. It was all very fast, and suddenly I was out of a job. So I moved back to Pennsylvania. My family live here.”

“And you started the business.”

“Not for a few years. I worked odd jobs for a while. In ’51 I was recalled and I considered staying in the Army—making a career of it.”

“You did?”

“For a moment. Somebody convinced me otherwise.”

“That’s a pity. You could’ve retired a colonel, or even higher.”

“Maybe. It certainly felt like a possibility, going back. But they had good arguments.”

A long pause then, or maybe Lew is drifting off again—but no, he’s climbing his way back to consciousness at accelerating speed, and he can distinctly hear the big clock ticking on the wall.

“This is a lovely area. I saw the fields, driving in. Is it all yours?”

“Some. We rent off most of the land, but we keep the plots around the house. We don’t want to see strangers working the field when we sit in our backyard.”

“... We?” Stephen’s voice is polite, but unsure.

“Yes.”

“I—had no idea.”

Dick clears his throat, and Lew has the distinct impression, through his closed eyes, that Dick is looking at him. “We are very private men, Professor.”

“Of course. I understand.”

“And we value our privacy above everything else.”

\+ + +

Lew opens his eyes a while later, when Dick touches his shoulder. The sun is still high in the sky, and the professor’s armchair is empty. Lew squints a little, sitting up straight and bending his stiff neck.

“Hey, red,” he murmurs fondly.

Dick casts a quick glance over his shoulder, then sits himself down next to Lew. “You’ll break your back, sleeping like this. Why don’t you go upstairs?”

“Who’s sleeping? I’m just resting my eyes.”

Dick smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling softly. “Stephen’s staying for dinner.”

“Mm. Right. I’d better start cooking, then.”

“No need. I asked Annie.”

“Tater tot casserole?”

“Among other things.”

Lew sighs happily. All culinary prowess in the Winters family went to the daughter, no doubt about that, but thank God she likes to share.

“Where’s your friend?”

“Bathroom. I offered him the guest room,” Dick adds. “He said he’d booked a hotel room in town, but that’s out of the question.”

“Right,” Lew agrees. “Where am I sleeping, then?”

“There’s Dan’s old room. Or—” Dick hesitates. “You can take the bedroom, and I’ll take Dan’s.”

“That’d look funny.” Lew touches Dick’s hand resting on the sofa, idly stroking his knuckles, and drops his voice to the lightest whisper. “You take the bedroom. I’ll sneak in for a quick fuck after dark.”

Dick chuckles, interlacing their fingers. “Love, I’ll be out cold _hours_ before dark.”

“Eh, I’ll take it. I’m not picky.”

From the far end of the corridor comes the muffled sound of the toilet flushing. Dick withdraws his hand reflexively, but Lew catches it back. Dick seems on the verge of saying something, something that refuses to come out, and looks away.

It was nice for a moment, while Lew was still floating between sleep and wakefulness, to think that what they are to each other might be just another topic of conversation, like the weather and what’s for dinner, but now that he’s fully awake he’s ashamed that the professor knows. What do they look like in a stranger’s mind? Do they seem pitiful, two faulty pieces who just happened to stick together by an accident of nature?

He thinks of mentioning that he overheard them, but then, just like Dick couldn’t bring himself to speak, neither can he.

In time he’s made peace with the fact that there are things which will never be conversation points. The war’s one, and it’s different for Dick, he knows, but Lew can’t change who he is—only step aside for a while and doze off while some conversations go on without him.

It’s not perfect, but in its flawed, bumpy way, it works.

“So,” he says, pulling off a smile in which he pours all the love he feels for this ridiculous man of his, packed tight to fit on his lips. “We’ll have to find another way to give Lynn a stroke.”

**Author's Note:**

> The quotes that are not from the show are from Dick Winters's _Beyond Band of Brothers_ (somewhat intentionally misquoted).


End file.
